A third party recorded video of the actual arrest, which the group posted to YouTube.

An attorney representing four Christian evangelists arrested earlier this month at the Dearborn Arab International Festival said Monday his clients did nothing illegal -- and they took video to prove it.

However, the tapes were confiscated by the arresting officers, and the Dearborn Police Department has not responded to requests to release the video, attorney Robert Muise said Monday on WJR-AM 760.

"We're defending them in the criminal case, but the bigger issue is we have police misconduct going on down in Dearborn," said Muise, who works for the Ann Arbor-based Thomas Moore Law Center, which bills itself as a Christian version of the ACLU.

"Everyone's space should be respected," Haddad told the newspaper. "It's Father's Day weekend. ... People are here to have a good time, and it's our job to ensure security."

Muise said two of his clients were engaging Muslims that attended the cultural festival in a dialogue about their faith -- legally and peacefully. Two others recorded their interactions.

"They put everything on video so we'd know," Muise said. "They plainly went there with the intention of being peaceful, of preaching the gospel, of engaging some of the Muslims in a question and answer about the differences between Christianity and Islam."

Local Christian Pastor Haytham Abi-Haydar, who says he has set up a booth at the festival without incident since 1999, told the Mission News Network the group was "intimidating people" with its cameras and challenging Muslims in a way that incited loud reaction.

"I know for one fact: if I was the police, I am responsible for the security of the community there and for the security [of Acts 17 Apologetics]," he said. "For their own security, I would have forced them to leave the area. And if they would have rejected it, I would have arrested them myself."

While the festival has no openly religious affiliations, the arrests are the latest in a series of controversies involving Christians attending in an attempt to convert Muslims.

The Thomas Moore Law Center previously represented California-based Pastor George Saieg, who recently was granted an emergency motion to hand out Christian literature as he walked around at the three-day festival. The city previously limited the handout of literature to a specific booth area.

Listen to the full WJR interview with Muise in the embedded player below.